Mental Health Mental Illness

How good is your mental health care? Depends where you live

Access to physician services and pharmaceuticals is vital–particularly among patients with serious mental illness–to insure patients receive the care they need. However, the likelihood patients receive this care depends on where they live. A paper by Manchester (2018) examines a cohort of patients eligible for both Medicare and U.S. Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and finds: 


The number of services for SSDI beneficiaries ranged from almost 48 per capita in Minnesota to 23 in Arkansas. Services for musculoskeletal impairments averaged 4.6 per capita, ranging from 6.7 in Minnesota to 2.5 in Hawaii. The greatest variation occurred in services for mental disorders, averaging 3.2 for the U.S. but ranging from 9.1 in Massachusetts to 1.4 in Alabama.

As the saying goes: location, location, location.

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